*as stated elsewhere in this space, I’ve been slowly putting a rough draft of a project I’ve been working on forever (writing my life’s story) down in this space where I can let it breathe and have it hold me accountable to finishing it someday. Emphasize “rought draft,” but here is another installment:
I imagine that, for anyone who has wrestled with and experienced chronic nightmares, they know how hard it is to shake those demons. Night time becomes their playground, that liminal space where they are able to prey on one’s fears. A space where we become truly vulnerable to these vivid portraits being imprinted on our minds.
More, in fact, than just a matter of the mind.
I am five or six years old. Bedtime for me was never a matter of simply giving in to the needed sleep a young body requires. I never knew what awaited me on the other side of the transition from wakefulness to dreaming. There was a transient quality that I noted about the whole process, and through these ealier years the invetible monsters residing within my unconscsious psyche that I both now feared and was growing to expect became more and more common.
And I would always know the moment when their imminant arrival would be made clear, as my chronic nightmares, which played like reoccuring episodes of a serialized show, always picking up where I had left off, would each begin in the same way. I could feel and was consciously aware of that odd and unexplainable moment between wakefulness and sleep, a moment in which I have one foot in both worlds, and it would be in my awareness of occupying this space that I would suddenly experience this feeling of being sucked down a dark, black hole.I didn’t want to go, and yet I had no other choice.
I would emerge from this hole in my dreamspace, again fully aware and conscious of where I was. These dreams tended to tackle similar motifs. One of the most common dreams would find me still in my own bed. Which was always disorienting, because this is the same place in which I was whisked away from the slumbering body that, in some bizarre way, seemed to co-exist with me in this terrorized image of a different kind of wakefulness. As I mentioned, this shared bedroom with my two brothers was one part of a single room, divided by a doorway that separated our space from my parents space. The first thing I would endeavor to do is try to get through that doorway to my parents sleeping space, but I never could. It would inevitably be blocked by something (usually piled up mattresses), and in my efforts to climb over, the beast, the being, whatever it was (it was always the same figure) would come up the stairs and drag me back with it.
It was at this point that I would find myself trapped by this presence, in one particular case chasing me away from our house only to find myself stuck in a loop, experiencing the same feelings of fear over and over again. In another trapping me in a maze that led me deeper and deeper into this ever pressing darkness.
Yes, this was me at 4/5 years old. I’ve spent my entire life since pondering and wondering over what this was. Where did these nightmares come from? Why and how was I having such a vivid existential crisis at a time when I was still barely discovering what the world was? Why do these dreams remain as vivid and real to me all these years later as they did when I was 5 years old?
The truth is, I don’t know. I’ve been given different kinds of answers from people with different sorts of predications and bias, some insisting it has a spiritual origin while others read it through the lens of material explanations. What I do know is that these nightmares, defined as they were through the exercising of some very real fears, have followed me my whole life, simply manifesting itself in different ways within different contexts. I no longer have these chronic nightmares (as I’ll get to in a moment), but the older I got (and get) the more I found it marrying to other sorts of tangible expressions, such as my ensuing battles with anxiety and depression.
The beast is, I have found, a slippery thing. A shapeshifter if you will. And it’s usually at the moment when I think I’ve finally outgrown those childhood fears that they prove as alive and well as they’ve always been, simply finding a new way to impose itself into my ever changing contexts.
And yet, embedded in my memory is a parallel thread. These are moments where I have found myself freed from a specific expression. Moments where hope and healing are made alive, These memories muddle the narrative, I have found, breaking the cycles even where the beast still lingers.
A first turning point came when I had reached Grade 5. I had transitioned from the public school system to our local private institution (Calvin Christian School) in grade 4, In my second year now, it had become common place for me to be riding my bike to school, which followed a meandering street towards these specific short cuts through some as of yet still undeveloped fields towards our bay about 10 or so minutes away. I remember having had a particularly rough day and a long previous night, the sort, familiar to me by this point, that would sit and perculate in my mind through the minutes and hours. At this particular moment it was the afternoon, thus I was coming home from school. I had decided to put my headphones in and was listening to a tape as I was riding. Thus the reason I did not hear or see the car coming around the bend behind me before I turned to cross the road.
What I remember is briefly turning my head to see a car now directly in my face. All I could think to do in what would have been counted in mere seconds, was to close my eyes and throw up my arms.
When I opened my eyes again I was on the other side of the car. Still on my bike. Without a scratch. At which point I remember hearing and experiencing two different things simultaneously. One was the driver, whom had gotten out of their car and was now yelling at me. I remember hearing distinct words
“But how”
“I hit you.”
“This makes no sense.”
“Why weren’t you watching!!”
As these words were filtering in and out of my consciousness I was acutely aware of another voice, one which was speaking with far more clarity and attention. It told me to “let go of my fear.” It assured me that I would have “a long life” (whatever that means I still have no idea) and that my life “would be important.”
Where did this voice come from? My adult mind tends to look at it with skepticism, especially where a life long struggle with fear persists. Too ambiguous to mean anything, too generic to have relevance. The product of a young mind prone to fears and delusions. But even as I do, I have to attend for the way this experience changed the world for that young kid in that moment. I know what it did for the child’s mind for a fact, whether my adult senses trust its reliablity or not. While I didn’t understand the words (truth be told my fears were not exactly manifesting as an awareness of finitude or anything like that, and I wasn’t fearing what we might call physical death), I knew the feeling that followed. It felt like a weight had been lifted off of me. Like some chains had been unshackled, for as corny as that old religious language sounds.
Most important, the chronic nightmares stopped from that point forward.
There’s a lot of life inbetween, but this event is one that would not remerge in my consciousness again until my late twenties and early thirties (in a powerful way, which I will get to). After my graduating year, much of my identity and life would become wrapped up in this small house church turned eventual non-denominational mega-church. I’ll dig deeper into that part of my story later too. But the 10 year span between between 1994 and 2004, would be the period of my life when I found myself really fleshing out my relationship to this idea I called God and faith, something which would come to a head in 2002,2003 as that old beast would rear its head once more. Long before this period of my life however I find this odd memory. This odd story, just sitting there in the atmsophere of my wrestling. I don’t know that its something I would say I forgot, although maybe in a way that’s true. It’s simply something I had compartmentalized. It meant what it meant to that child. The car? The life that almost ended? Those weren’t particularly shocking or revelatory in the moment. What was important was that this demon I had been battling for so long had finally been defeated.
*as mentioned elsewhere, last year I sarted to construct my life story. I’ve slowly been forcing myself to put some of the rudimentary writings, in all of its rough and unedited form, into this space so as to hold myself accountable to it. This is another entry:
As I’ve already mentioned, memory is a peculiar thing. Fleeting in its nature. Maleable. Manipulable. Yet any sense that we might have of our lives, at least as something real and tangible and coherent, remains rooted in our ability to formulate these memories into a narrative. A story. What we perceive of who we are begins and ends with our memories- who we remember ourselves to be within the story of our lives.
Thus memory is, at its heart, an act of imagining, or imagination. In remembering who we were we also discover who we are. Or more importantly, we begin to trust this story to say something true about ourselves, and therefore the world that we inhabit.
For me, one of the more fascinating aspects of this truth is the way it roots us in time and place. Thus, to remember is not an act of the mind but an act of embodiment. Or in theological terms, memory can be understood to be an act of incarnation. This is what makes memory trustworthy. This is what makes our lives more than mere data points that we can string together as a bunch of regurgitated, verifiable facts. To trust our memories is to learn how to tell our story in a way that finds us inhabiting time and space.
Time- it’s the early 1980’s.
Space- a north end neighborhood in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
One benefit of growing up in a family that moved no less than 8 times in the first 20 years of my life is the ability it gives me to travel these same physical roads back into the story of my life. These roads and the houses they lead to, are markers. Walking through these old neighborhoods that each defined a piece of my childhood might feel foreign to and disconnected from the changed landscape of my present, yet this is the birthing place for rebuildling the memory of who I was.
As things tend to go, its worth confesesing that I inherited this same sense of restlessness, moving no less than 6 times in a span of 10 years after I moved out of my parents home in 2004. It also remains deeply curious to me to ruminate on how my present location, nestled on the cusp of Winnipeg’s infamous north end (quite literally, as if we lived on the opposite side of the street- read: the north side- we would be in a different neighborhood entirely), is mere blocks (google has it as a 3 minute drive) from where I spent the earliest years of my life, close to the corner of Manitoba avenue and Arlington.
Sadly the iconic Arlington bridge, known for its steep incline, was officially closed off and decommissioned a few years back. Growing up in this neighborhood this was one of the main throughfares for getting from the north end of the city to downtown, and I have fond memories of my dad hitting the gas of that old station wagon on the way up the ramp, attempting to achieve record heights jumping the levelling road at the top.
The old mom and pop ice cream shop at the corner of Manitoba and Arlington is also gone. I spent many a day meandering over to that cream coloured neighborhood hang out, especially after becoming aquainted with one of its regular visitors- a dog whom resembled Mr. Mugs, the old English Sheepdog made famous in the 70’s and 80’s by Canadian children’s author Martha Kambeitz and Carol Roth.
He was a spitting image, an oversized dog with a thick double coat bristling in the sheen of its white and grey markings. People of course told me it wasn’t actually Mr. Mugs, but if you asked my 6 year old self I would have insisted he was the real deal. I wasn’t about to be duped by other people’s skepticism.
As far as I’m aware, our own dalmation cross never made his aquaintance, although he also wasn’t around for very long. He had a bad habit of running away, and on one occasion we weren’t able to track him down. In my childhood imagination I liked to imagine the two of them somehow making their way through the world together like a cast of character in one of those famed books.
Speaking of that old dalmation, it’s entirely possible this is where my love for animals began. Not just with our family dog, as my level of reponsibility at the time was admittedly near zero, but with my growing awareness of a life unlike my own. He was an outside dog. We had a doghouse pushed up against the house beside the side door where we he would greet us and we would spend time just hanging out. I have a faint memory of one of us brothers taking him for a walk and losing the leash in a panic (as I said, he loved to take off). Or, much more vividly, a memory of the historic snowstorm that not only locked us in our house but buried him in his doghouse, leaving my dad needing to dig him out. What is perhaps most ingrained in me is the tensions this early relationship would create, awkening me to those hard and difficult feelings that come from experiencing life in a world marked by suffering and death.
This also came from the stories I started consuming. What started with Mr Mugs turned into my consumption of Thornton Burgess’ The Bedtime Story Books, leading as well to novels like Charlotte’s Web, Beautiful Joe, and Where the Red Fern Grows. This part of my story wll come into play in some important ways later, but here I find the seedbed for a part of myself that remains just as apparent to me today as it did nearly 45 years ago as I began to become aware of the world I was inhabiting. That sense of needing to care for this life relegated to the yard outside our house, and that first sick feeling that accompanies his eventual loss.
Some of my fondest memories from this time in my life revolve around our perusing of the neighborood. All three of us boys made a past time hanging out with the kids down the street, a boy named Arnold and a girl named Brea. We would spend our days wondering the neighborhood together, under the grand shadow of the massive Ukrainian Catholic Church to the north of us, a mark of this once central bustling hub of Ukrainian and Polish immigrants, and to the South of us the open park where we spent copious amounts of time climbing this giant old tree and doing what young kids did at that age- racing our way to the top and hanging out on the hightest branches in a way that made us feel like we were on top of the world. We sold lemonade and we played hop scotch games with our rudimentary drawings on the concrete slabs of the sidewalks lining both sides of the street.
One of my favorite memories though is one that, to this day, no one believes. It remains seared into my brain as though it happened yesterday. I can replay every detail, from the cracks in the sidewalk to the countours of our neighbors house a little ways up the block with its front porch and iconic shapely posts. We were out playing and we had stopped over at Arnold’s place. While I’m not precisely sure what was occupying us at the time, although I can imagine we were coming back from playing in the park, what I do remember is remaining outside, lingering behind the others as they went around and inside to Arnold’s kitchen. That’s when I turned around and found myself face to face with what looked like a wasp the size of my shoe. Just sitting there on the banister of his front deck with what looked like monsterous demon eyes. There were legendary stories of killer bees kicking around at the time, and so the first thought that went through my head was that some version of such a thing had finally arrived in my corner of Winnipeg and it was now up to me to break the news to the world. So I did what any sensible kid might do- I ran back to our house and got my dad.
Of course, by the time I got back it was gone. And with it went the possibility of having someone else to corrobarate my memory of this monumental find. What I can confidently say is that there are few more scenes from this time in my life that I can recall with such clarity and immediacy. And sure, it’s a nice piece of lore to help the story of my childhood feel bigger than life.
All I can do is imagine. Or in this case, remember.
Whatever it was, it was abnormal enough to capture my attention. Perhaps more importantly, this was my first experience of needing to communicate something that people who would and could not understand. A moment of having something I believed must be true being met with the skepticism of the world around me. This would go on to shape my world moving forward.
Our house at the time was modest. A basic two story bungalo, the main floor containing a kitchen that, not inconsequentially, my dad almost burned down after being left alone to cook us dinner. I remember sitting on the couch and seeing this sudden flash of light, followed by the smoke alarm and, of course, the ensuing smoke. My dad came running out of the kitchen grabbed us (or it might have just been me), and brought us outside, me holding the one cherished possession of my childhood, a small old Linus sized blanket knitted by my grandma, and my dad moving around in a frenzied state. There would be a big black circle on the ceiling to mark the occasion. This might or might not be what led my mother to retire from her job as a nurse.
Upstairs there was a double room. The first section is where us boys slept on bunk beds, while the enclave, positioned just through a doorway, was where my parents slept, tying the two spaces together. Speaking of my childhood feeling larger than life, I suppose killer demon wasps the size of my shoe has a certain kind of dramatism befitting such a story. In its own way, and perhaps in a different and much more intuitive way, it was the years I spent in this house, and inparticular the nights I spent in this room, that give these memories its own kind of heightened presence. This is where my life long journey with existentialism really begins to manifest itself, in a very real way through what became a very real and very powerful struggle with chronic nightmares that carried me through the remaining years in this particular neighborhood.
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts in this space, I’ve been journeying through the Gospel of Mark this year, both with my church and with select authors/commentaries. Along this journey I’ve been trying to stay open to whatever God desires to say through this study and meditation.
Sometimes the thoughts that come from this are larger ones. Such as the pardigm shifting inviation to see the Gospel of Mark as a parallel portrait of creation/new creation, hearing in its opening words (the beginning of the Gospel of Christ Jesus) not just the beginning of the story of Jesus (as in a biography), and not just the culmination of the story of Israel (as in a narrative), but as the beginning of a new reality. The unfolding story is not simply about a Jesus in history, but about the life of its readers now occupying space in this inaugerated new resurrection reality. In this sense reading the Gospel According to Mark also becomes our own biography, adopting ourselves into this same patterned way of being and existing and learning how to see the world through this lens.
And sometimes the reflections are small. As it is with this mornings reading from Chapter 7.
The focus point of this morning was the familiar verse, “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” (7:15) For so much of my life this verse has simply stood as an invitation into a form of Christian liberty, typically over and against the constraints of religious tradition. A tradition that of course gets framed within those bad and angry pharisees. The larger discussion about the ways in which we have turned the Pharisees into an unfortunate stereotype within streams of Christianity aside, trying to cut through the noise of that familiarity can be difficult, but there was a note from my commentary that helped reframe this verse in a fresh light.
This comes from the the climatic point of the larger discourse in this chapter regarding God’s Word and Tradition, which is found in 7:20-23
“And he (Jesus) said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
As my commentary (by James Edwards) points out, there is an intentional literary quality and structure to the way the author compiles this list that opens up a window into Jesus’ central point in verse 15, that “there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
To back up slightly first, the initial concern is the Pharisees noting that the disciples of Jesus were “eating with defiled hands.” Why does this matter? Because in the Tradition of the Judeans this represented a condition of impurity, and purity laws are intrinsically attached to the greater concern for idolatry. Within the larger framework of this Tradition lies the story of exile and promise, and thus any and all appeals to Tradition are not to rules but to the hope of being set apart for the sake of God’s expected renewal of a creation enslaved to Sin and Death, the source of the sin pollution that purity laws look to remove.
Readers of the Gospel according to Mark will notice once again the patterned movement from outside the house (with the crowd) and inside the house (with the disciples), a movement that is gradually blurding the lines between the two as the Gospel goes along. The house in Mark is temple imagery, thus this isn’t just about eating food with unwashed hands but about the larger portrait of the new creation reality being brought about “in Christ,” something that is renewing the whole of creation.
The transition from crowd (7:1;14) to house comes in verse 17, once agian asking this particular audience (the disciples) whether they understand the point. Which is where Jesus adds this climatic and informing explanation in verses 20-23, reflected through the following dynamics Mark’s literary/narative device:
The list is broken into two collections of words, both bound together by the unique use of the word poneria (Greek, translated as evil or wickedness)
The first 5 words are deliberately represented in the plural, indicating their external quality- they come from or happen on the outside- fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice
The second collection of words are deliberately reprsented in the singular, indicating that they are reflecting what is birthed on the inside- deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
To grasp how the ancient audience would have heard this in its second temple Judean context, all of the words presented in the plural would have been attached to matters of the Tradition. There are two possible ways of reading the emphasis to this end. Either it could read as the following: For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: Fornication? Theft? Murder? Adultery? Avarice? All of these things are rooted within, in the wickedness of the heart, such as deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
Or, it could read from the opposite direction: For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: Fornication? Theft? Murder? Adultery? Avarice? The reason why these things matter within the Tradition is because they breed the wickedness of the heart within- deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly.
Noting this literary device is more than just semantics. What becomes clear is, Jesus is not dismantling the relevance of Tradition in favour of some form of “Christian liberty.” Instead Jesus is explaining what the Tradition upholds- the story of God’s acting in the world. This is what understanding ANE purity laws opens up for modern readers. Where we might tend towards reading Law as legalism, a set of rules we must follow to be considered righteous and therefore on the inside, what purity laws actually indicate is a conception of two different realities- one enslaved to Sin and Death, the other liberated by Life and Transformation. Further, in the crass imagery of verse 19, depicting food as something that goes into our stomachs and out into the sewers, the brief interjection by the author’s own voice (a rarity in Mark) is not rendering the concern for idolatry as wrong or insignificant, the author is rather proclaiming the nature of God’s Kingdom having arrived in Jesus. If the accusation of the Pharisees’ concern is that they “are making void the word of God through their tradition,” (verse 13), the point of that accusation directly relates not to the undermining of the story this Tradition upholds, but rather the imagination its fulfillment demands. The word of God is made void. Meaning, it has been demonstrated to be proven false. What is this word? In Mark the word is the proclomation that underlines the Gospel or good news (1:1). For Mark, “the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near” (1:15) is the context for everything that follows, and it is marked by this movement of transformation out into the whole of creation. If this is, indeed the reality Mark’s audience occupies, the emphasis on this transforming work moves from the inside out. If we want to imagine a different reality, we begin by imagining a heart that is being renewed by the spirit.
Instead of being pulled out of a world in which we find these (plural) external realities, as was the case with the creation and formulation of Israel, the call is this movement into the world where God’s fulfillment is witnessed to through the transformation of the heart (understood as the seat of ther person). For any faithful Torah adherent this would have confjured up a recasting of the original creation story in Genesis 1-4 in light of the beginning of the good news, a new creation story. The question becomes, does our recontextualizing of the word of God believe this to be true or not. If not we are still occupying space outside of the garden. If so, we are occupying space in the new creation. Two different ways of seeing the world, two different ways of being in the world.
I was listening to an interview with Thi Nguyen, author of his newest book The Score: How To Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game, and it raised some intriguing questions regarding the role of “measures” when it comes to the way we experience life in this world.
His passion is games (see his book Games: Agency As Art), but his interest in the ways this applies to life in general on a philsophical and practical level. As humans we seem to want, or even need, to keep score. This brings about certain emotions and motivations that we would largely deem positive. To a degree its not so much about the outcomes but rather the engagement of challenge and competition.
But it also becomes somewhat problematic when we begin to look at this notion of measures in the broader playing field of life and society. Including our sense of meaning.
Measures carry this tension in which they need to be simple, coherent and accessible, and often presented within sharp dichotomies, in order to be revelant. At the same time these black and white terms tend to disguise the nuance underneath. What makes this more difficult is that the ones drawing out and working with the nuances (the experts) tend to be the minority few, while the ones participating in these games, in work and life and otherwise, tend to be the majority whom are actually the ones playing the games experts are anaylzying and manipulating.
Measures can also be defined as metrics. Metrics determine everything in society from the cost of goods to what we determine success. We find it in schools and workplaces and business structures and politics, family systems and social contexts. We see it in things like BMI to Rotten Tomatoes.
The whole world is a metric.
On a more universal front, particular measures typically rise to the top while others can sometimes be buried. Part of this is looking at the two primary ways of knowing- qualitative (nuanced and hard to communicate) and quantitative (simple and easy to access). In this portrait information is a specific thing that is meant to be shared across a vast cross-section of experiences. It is de-nuanced by necessity. Qualitative made quantitative. Which explains how modern society with its emphasis on technological (and other) progress strives to capture reality in this sort of “information.” Reality defined by numbers. And yet within this, a world with established and studied rules and norms, which all systems need to survive, has to contend with the similtaneous seperation of cultural and perseonal contexts and allegiances.
What struck me about this conversation is how what drives so much of the human experience in modern society, where there is a need to break down studies of complexity into simple and clear pictures that we can then control, remains a construct. It’s not so much that we are constructing reality, although to a degree it is, as reality itself being framed as construct. Here illusions of modern creation meet with the determinitive nature of reality, and more you get away from the minority and into the majority the more true this becomes. All of our lives and every individual can be broken down into “information” feeding a metric. If this makes us uncomortable this can also be seen as a metric, a study of human tendency.
Where this conversation really becomes relevant is when we look at the values or aims behind the metrics. This is where it becomes abundantly clear that the game of life, seen within these measures, is deeply inconsistent and incoherent when it comes to how and why it is applied. It makes sense when contained within particular goals, but not where it comes to purpose. And the author brings up that these two things are important to distinguish between. A goal can largely fluctuate and change and be contained, purpose cannot. And yet when it comes to the study and manipulation of metrics the latter is rarely if ever part of the picture., at least not in a way that is made evident.
On a practical level we can speak of those aspects of reality that contain immense variables. For example, what it means for one person to have a healthy life can be vastly different than the next person. Same with happiness. And yet society has to function by codifying shared metrics. Further, any variable still reflects an individual responding to metrics. Hence, what makes reality what it is and the way we assess this reality and the way we formulate our beliefs depends on the ways in which our base level assumptions can justify itself. In other words, complexity is not an antidote to reductionism in any way, shape or form. We still come up against the same wall.
Why does this matter? Because behind our actions and our choices is the always that lingering question- why. And perhaps the accompanying “what.” These are the assumptions that drive us. Where we see these things as being betrayed as false we thus tend to experience a crisis. This is how it works. Hence why, which we can see when the author speaks about human demand for transparency versus determinitive practice, we intuitively want transparancy because it helps us feel like we aren’t being duped by something false, and yet transparency also forces any process to become hindered and muddled, precisely because the majority cannot function without simplified metrics. This is what the powers manipulate all the time. This is the shape of society.
To ask why then is to actually assess such illusions and ask what we can say is real, both in terms of the reality that is driving us and in terms of whether that can be trusted to say anything about what we value. Even then, in a certain worldview our brains would appear to be hardwired to apply willful ignorance to any forms of disonnance. On a biological level we could not function otherwise. It’s more important to believe and think something is true than for something to be true. That our measures are often manufactured is simply about analysis and control.
I had been mulling over this during the course of this week. In the interview both host and author find this stuff exciting to parse out largely from within a materialist worldview. What I found interesting is wondering about how both host and author justify the value of these metrics beyond the game. What would be the aim beyond necessary manipulation for the sake of progress or construction, which of course can apply to the function of our own lives and the function of the minority with influence over society at large?
Is there any way to move beyond the game?
Alongside this i just finished Wesley W Ellis’ new book Abiding in Amen: Prayer in a Secular Age, which fittingly fits a parallel theory alongisde the ways in which we think about prayer. Ellis sees the “games” the author is talking about in the interview as a function of secularism, which describes a society that is all about the desire and need for control. This is inherent to societal and human function. It is also the thing the author sees prayer, properly understood, as designed to counter. The problem Ellis points out, is that prayer has become redefined within those same secualrist terms. It has become part of the game. Thus I thought my full review of that book could function as an interesting counter to Nguyen’s conclusions:
I have long struggled with the idea of prayer. I have deep rooted anxiety over praying in public, praying out loud, and I tend to view prayer through the narrow lens of duty and discipline, which of course only really serves to underscore how bad I am at praying.
This might be why I find myself revisiting the topic from time to time over the years. One point of awareness that I think I have gained through my studies is that prayer can be practiced and experience in all manners of ways. For me, reading is a form of prayer. Watching film is a form of prayer. I don’t do well with the typical “quieting of the mind” approach. The last thing I want to be is lost in my own head.
Weley Ellis’ book might be the best exposition of the problem however, that problem being our tendency to see prayer as a spiritual discipline, something he ties to the trappings of modernity (or in the terms of the title of this book, secularity). A word that author takes careful aims not to turn into a “malevolent force,” but rather the simple observation of a social and historical reality. Dialoguing with the German philosopher Hartmut Rosa, he defines secularity, or the project of modernity, as “making the world controllable.” (page 15) This leads to the “malaise of modernity,” which is simply disillusionment, recognized or not. More control (modern progress) leads to more uncertainty and less mastery and greater disconnection. It reduces reality to a question of what is useful, “objectifying reality” (page 17) in the process. In terms of the Christian faith and practice, this can be described as idolatry.
In terms of prayer, the author states the following; “I believe this is how it feels to many who pray. They wonder why prayer isn’t working for them. They struggle because one cannot have a relationship with an idea, and we’ve made God into an idea. They wonder why they don’t feel they’ve mastered the discipline of prayer. So these questions about secularization are not posed to a secular them, outside of Christianity, but to the faithful (myself included) who pray- perhaps even regularly- but are often confronted with the feeling of a dead, frozen object instead of a living God.” (page 18)
This gets him into a theme that will carry through most of the book- prayer is our awareness of an uncontrollable world. “The good news is that whatever it is that we have engineered to death, it is not actually God. The dead thing is a false idol.” (page 19) The abide part of the book’s title then pushes to reframe this necessary aspect of prayer within the relationship it is meant to awaken. Prayer not as having but of being, not a means to an end but of being present with God. To abide in amen, a word that means “truly” or “certainly” is to abide not in the world we seek to control through prayer, but in the certain truth of God’s presence within an uncontrollable world.
This, the author insists, might sound obvious, but at its heart it is in fact a paradigm shift from the way we have become accustomed to think about prayer throuagh the lens of secularity. A shift from prayer as something we do and thus need to master to thinking about prayer as something God does. Here Ellis describes “a reversal in the trajectory” within the equation.
“i believe our struggle with prayer is one that can be solved not by doing more of anything but by letting things happen to us. It will require our getting out of the way, waiting, and allwoing the living God to act.” (page 49)
To “allow the first thought of prayer to be God’s action.” The author I think makes a profound statement to this end that this is not mere theological niceties, it “must meet the ground of our actual experience and emerge from it.” (page 50) It is something we come to know through participation. A participation that begins in the liturgical sense with the act of confession, which he defines as “removing whatever masks we may be wearing to hide our truest selves,” which is all of the stuff secularity has taught us to wear for the sake of control in a world built for manipulation and usefulness towards certain ends. A world that is designed to tell us where and how we are on the inside or on the outside. As the author writes, “It’s not merely that secularization has made it more difficult to believe in the existence of God. It is because secularization and the underlying epistemic and philosophical positions it has birthed (or perhaps from which it has been birthed, depending on how you look at it)- neoliberalism, capitalism, instrumental rationality, burnout, and developmentalism- have shifted the ground on which we stand and contorted the vantage point from which we pray, skewing our understanding of the very purpose, trajectory, and telos of prayer.” (page 58)
Again, this might sound trite or simple, but there is a profound resistance to moving from prayer as control to prayer as dependence. To moving from us as the starting point (the pray-er) to God as the starting point (the one who acts in drawing us to prayer). And one of the reasons this paradigm shift feels so much resistance is because God as the starting point means praying without control and without certianty. It strikes at the heart of belief and disbelief, essentially collapsing those things into a singular facet of this thing called “faith” (or its proper terminology, faithfulness or participatory belief). As the author states (page 108), if you are one who believes you will experience doubts, if you are one who doubts you will haunted by those things that lead us to wrestle with belief. We will always carry this tension (which the author cites Charles Taylor’s definition of a “cross-pressure”), which is precisely why prayer matters.
“No one defintion can fully sum up prayer, but each one captures something important about it. It is a raising up of our minds and hearts; a surge of the heart; sharing between friends; a long loving look at the real; and a conscious conversation.” (page 121) In short, the author sums this up as “a gift,” but in many ways a dangerous gift precisely because it calls us to give up control. A world, in conversation with Hartmut Rosa, defined by immanence and human agency can only lead to points of aggression. Which is exactly what we find within secularity. Not aggression as in violence (although it can be that to), but aggression as in aggressively needing to master the world through human ambition, be it within the context of our lives, enlightenment ideals, western progress. It is about stepping into a world where life is a constant measure of success of failure in this regard. And for anyone who also believes this aggression matters and has meaning to something (be it life itself or some idealized future aim), it leads us to constant propping up of illusions and delusions in order to justify the game.
That this thinking has infiltrated the church and the way we do church has simply lost the narrative of the clash of kingdoms to this end. As the author says, “when we should be talking about the crisis of faith, we tend to talk more about the crisis of effectiveness.” (page 138) That crisis of faith referencing the above tensions that belief and disbelief require. “Peace with God means conflict with the world.” Not conflict in the sense of opposition or violence, but the kind of abiding that teaches us how to see and engage something like secularity as a common human tendency in a world where God draws us to prayer. To learn how to engage the differences between abiding in amen of God’s rule and abiding in the great modern project. “The movement of prayer is the movement out of instrumental rationality and into… Christopraxis.” (page 144) Something the author parlays into a discussion of Aristotles concepts of poiesis (activities that result in an end product) and praxis (activities that are ends in and of themselves). For Aristotle, human flourishing was understood to be found in the latter. For the term Christopraxis, participation in Christ is the end prayer seeks. Part of the great suprirse of praxis is that such a way of participation actually leads to tranfsormation. Which is counter intuitive to a secularity that has taught us to give our time to things that have measurable outcomes. The difference is the ability to name that which matters (praxis) and giving ourselves to that which we cannot name (poiesis). We seek the measurable outcome naturally because it gives us control. But the irony is we do so without any measurable way to define why it matters or means anything at all. We know this intuitively, which is why secularity takes its toll on us, but giving up control (the act of prayer) is the much more difficult thing to do.
So, the author says. “What if we thought of prayer as God’s act of listening before we thought of it as our act of talking?” (page 164) How does this singular paradigm shift change our perspective? Our prayer life? How does it challenge our long standing tendency to see prayer as a discipline (mechanicistic practice). It brings alive this crazy idea that “prayer is for nothing.” (page 169) Which sounds crazy, and yet, as the author posits, is precisely where we find everything to be in Christ as the gift of prayer, not the outcome of prayer. Prayer becomes preparation for greater participation in a world where secularity lives and breathes as a reflection of the tensions we carry and face. “Human being is not a product of human becoming or of human doing.” (page 177) That is the heart of this preparation. That is what guides us through the tension. All else has one singular corollation- death. To be “in Christ,” as prayer makes aware, is to corollate being with life.
“If prayer were merely a human action, it would be fragile and fleeting- as fragile and fleeing as our own belief. The possiblity of prayer would be dependent on our ability to pray. It would have to stand on our own strength and our limited (in)ability to control the world around us. It would sway with the tides of circumstance, rising and falling with our own uncertainties. But because prayer is a divine act- an act in which God invites us to join- it stands firm.” (page 187)
Listening to Jack Garrett’s cover of the Waterboys’ “The Whole of the Moon” this morning. Was struck by this thought. 10 years ago I started my personal blog space as a way of grappling with the reality of turning 40, which for me had brought on a deeply felt existential crisis regarding this world and my place in it. The blog was my attempt to get that struggle out of my head and on to the page where it could percolate and breathe on the outside rather than consuming me from the inside. It’s a practice I still need to utilize to this day
When I turned 45 I changed the name of my blog space to “The Stories of my Life.” This was an attempt to shift my focus away from the anxieties of being in my 40s towards the ongoing practice of living towards my 50s, with this recognition in tow- the story of my life is shaped by the stories of my life. Who I am is a reflection of that participation, and it is that participation that sets me within the larger narrative of this greater existence that embodies us all.
This included the role of the arts. It also includes the stories of relationships and encounters and experiences. All of these things are what shape a life far beyond the tightly guarded parameters of the “I” which grounds so much of the ideology I find in the modern western mythos. To this end, this song reminded me of the ways in which so much that awakens a life is our relationship to those whom inspire us to see the whole. Whom help us to see what we are blinded to in the circumstances of the present moment. These relationships arrive in all sorts of ways. For me, these are most often the persons whom seem to fill in the gaps of my own lacking.
I am someone who has always been drawn to this tension filled space beteeen cynicism and wonder, and I often find greatest inspiration from those whom seem to have this inate ability to embody that tension in a way that is able (and brave enough) to carry that forward in the form of true belief. Subsequently, this tends to be those voices whom seem to have this inate awareness of and access to what I would call the spiritual dimension of this world that I continually need and long for in my sense of wonder but protect against with my cynicism. Over the years I have found that my cynicism only makes sense in a world where true wonder actually exists, and for me that is sustained in the stories that define me, the stories that represent those whom seem to be able to open up those liminal spaces where the whole moon can be seen and felt and understood in the tensions that force me to wrestle with it. Without this i find life ceases to make sense.
It is the grace that these stories offer me which push me to hold on to wonder as I approach my 50th year. Heres the lyrics to the song:
The Whole Of The Moon”
I pictured a rainbow You held it in your hands I had flashes But you saw the plan I wandered out in the world for years While you just stayed in your room I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon The whole of the moon
You were there at the turnstiles With the wind at your heels You stretched for the stars And you know how it feels To reach too high Too far Too soon You saw the whole of the moon
I was grounded While you filled the skies I was dumbfounded by truths You cut through lies I saw the rain-dirty valley You saw Brigadoon I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon
I spoke about wings You just flew I wondered, I guessed and I tried You just knew I sighed But you swooned I saw the crescent You saw the whole of the moon The whole of the moon
With a torch in your pocket And the wind at your heels You climbed on the ladder And you know how it feels To get too high Too far Too soon You saw the whole of the moon The whole of the moon
Unicorns and cannonballs Palaces and piers Trumpets, towers, and tenements Wide oceans full of tears Flags, rags, ferry boats Scimitars and scarves Every precious dream and vision Underneath the stars
Yes, you climbed on the ladder With the wind in your sails You came like a comet Blazing your trail Too high Too far Too soon You saw the whole of the moon
The tagline for the book Progress: A History of Humanity’s Worst Idea by Samuel Miller McDonald says, “Progress is power. But our modern story of progress is a very dangerous fiction.”
I have been listening to this on audio along with Sven Beckert’s Capitalism: A Global History and Adam Kucharski’s Proof: The Art and Science of Certainty. All three books, in their own ways, speak of this dangerous fiction as an interconnected reality informing, but not limited to, our Western history and political constructions
Although this is a surface summary, I could state the interconnected relationship of these things in the following way:
Capitalism is by definition a global idea and reality and is the ultimate outcome of progress
Progress is rooted in a historical seedbed that gives rise to our narrative of western exceptionalism (otherwise known as the myth of progress) and all of its political expressions
Proof, married as it is to the fallacy of certainty, is what sustains and gives Progress it’s power through the language of the modern scientific enterprise
In all three cases what strikes me is how so much of what we see in the world today tends to find itself anchored in one of these three assumptions, which is what really drove me this year to dig deeper into the simple observation that the narratives we tell define how we both name the problem and express our hope. In many ways we’ve lost the language of story having sacrificed it on the alter of our modern myths. The irony being these myths are in fact guiding stories that reflect what we believe to be true about the world.
For me, the first necessary step to any sort of healing or transformation on a societal and social level, and even a personal level, is recognizing what story we are in and seeking better narratives. Even where that challenges some of our most tightly guarded allegiances. Or perhaps so that such allegiances might be challenged. The quickest way to ensure it can’t be? Tell ourselves that we aren’t beholden to a story.
For me when people ask who my favorite filmmaker is there is one name that immediately comes to mind- Guillermo del Toro.
I have read a ton on this enigmatic figure over the years, I had the chance to visit the touring exhibit on his life and career, At Home With Monsters, and I’ve spent years meditating on and exploring his most seminal work, Pans Labyrinth, a film and book which have long awakened wonder in me for a world beyond the tightly guarded framework of my rational senses.
What makes del Toro an especially interesting figure for me is the way my own interaction with his work and art consistently places me in the company of those who see his work as awakening wonder in a world where the perceived metaphors that capture del Toros imagination are rooted in a material existence not a true spiritual reality. From this vantage point I find del Toro’s ability to carry the tensions of his own questions to do quite the opposite. From his vantage point, an upbringing that found him caught between the polarizing and contrasting atheism of one caregiver and the religious dogmatism of another found its most clarifying voice in an individual who helped connect these two things in the singular language he could understand- the monsters that connect flesh and blood realities to our spiritual longjngs. Metaphors are only meaningful if they are rooted in something true, and for del Toro, as is evidenced by his life and work, it is the tension that holds that in place without losing his grasp on either.
There is another aspect of his story though that I have always found captivating- a life that embraces the tensions and questions against the backdrop of a genuine spiritual experience that he can’t just explain away. This is made even more fascinating having read Ron Perlman’s autobiography Easy Street (The Hard Way), as Perlman’s own example of this very same thing grounded that relationship in a shared wrestling.
I was thinking about this as I finished reading Anthony Hopkins memoir We Did Okay, Kid yesterday. A figure I thought I knew but it turns out I didn’t, and a memoir that handed me a deep appreciation for a life on similar grounds. Similarly for Hopkins, he grew up with the hard atheism of his father on one side and the religious convictions of his mother on the other, navigating his own life and career against the emerging questions that would come from a spiritual experience he could not simply explain away. In fact, over and over again I find this to be the case with creative voices. I think it is this reality that frees up these voices to use art to truly explore the questions without parameters. In the case of Hopkins, this formative phrase “I’m okay, we are okay” becomes a mantra his aging self speaks over his life as a governing truth, that he can speak to that life of wrestling and say “We did okay.” A mantra that, as he explains, has come to embrace the great mystery of this existence which he has come to call God.
Reminiscent of a book I read earlier in January called Conversations on Faith with Martin Scorsese as he speaks of his own work reflecting a similar wrestling with the coexisting dimensions of this world. As he states, “The idea that everything can be scientifically explained doesn’t seem ridiculous to me, but quite naive.” As a voice speaks into Hopkins life at one point, to say “I think I’ve found God” is to discover that God was always there, a truism that anchors any spiritual quest, which for me all art evidently becomes and reflects.
On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith? And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
Mark 4:35-41
Immediately he made his disciples get into the baot and go on ahead to the other side, to Behsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After waying farewell to them, he went up on the mountain to pray.
When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came towards them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
Mark 6:45-52
The other week my pastor posed a question in relationship to Mark’s depiction of the demioniac in chapter 5:1-20. Why is it that in this story the thing the disciples fear is not the demons but the transformed (clothed and in right mind) man? I had been pondering this question, finding it an illuminating expression of how it is that we tend to deal with our fears as people. Is it that they deal with their fear by demonizing the other? In this case it makes sense why the transformed man would be the thing they resist, as for as long as one can conflate the demon with the other it means we are on the right side of the equaion.
Or is it that they fear the power of the one who can command the demons? This is certainly a common theme in the Gospel according to Mark, people responding to Jesus’ power in fear. In nearly every case this relates to who Jesus is. There is a sense in which discovering who Jesus is overturns our own lives.
It very well could be both of those things at once. “The other side,” according to my commentaries, was a place known for its association with strange activity. Thus fear would have naturally been built in to these sea crossings. It was when we walked through Chapter 6 this past week, the second storm narrative (6:45-52), that I felt some of my thoughts coming together.
If, as I have reflected on in previous blogs in this space, the opening of Mark 1 awakens us to not just the beginning of the story of Jesus but the beginning of a new creation story (the Gospel which proclaims the arrival and inaugeration of this new creation, also called the arrival of the kingdom of God or “the fulfillment of time”, 1:15), the author of Mark’s Gospel gives us not just a portrait of contrasting kingdoms but contrasting rule. The one who “is more powerful than I,” says John, is coming. And what is the ultimate expression of this coming? Baptizing with the Holy Spirit, the very thing that has the power to transform.
For Mark, the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is marked by his intent to frame it within Israel’s story, conjuring up the picture of Israel as God’s child and firstborn (Exodus 4; Hosea 11:1; Jeremiah 31). The Spirit drives Jesus into the wilderness (which is where John already was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins, bringing the people from the whole Judean countryside and Jerusalem out to him in 1:4) where Jesus confronts the very powers enslaving God’s good creation, doing what God had promised to do through the raising up of Israel as his covenant people.
From here Mark jumps straight into Jesus’ ministry with the words “follow me.” Jesus is on the move and the called people are called to move with him in this transforming work, leading them straight into a confrontation with the same powers Jesus encountered in the wilderness. Powers that fear Jesus has come to “destroy” them precisely because they know who Jesus is (1:24)
This begins a patterned movement early on in the Gospel according to Mark between Jesus entering houses and synagogues, creating this interesting contrast between those on the inside and those on the outside. The house is a picture of the the temple/tabernacle, which is where God has taken up residence in the midst of a creation enslaved to the Powers of Sin and Death according to the story of Israel (the Torah). It is a microcosm of Eden where Adam and Eve ultimately enter the wilderness. Thus we find the crowds consistently positioned at the doorway, representing that inbetween space of conflict and disruption. And yet the Jesus we encounter in Mark is one who is on the move, and in Chapter 6 we find this pattern giving way to the gradual process of breaking down the walls between the temple and the wilderness. Following a chapter on the nature of God’s kingdom (chapter 4), we have these two framed “storm” passages quoted above marked by getting into the boat and going to the other side, the first indication that what is contained inbetween reflects an important transitional point in the narrative. If the first storm narrative brings about a particular response (“Do you not care that we are perishing”, 4:38), a response that echos the very words of the demons (“Have you come to destroy us”, 1:24), the second storm narrative in chapter 6 is said to evoke fear (“they saw him and were terrified”, 6:50) because they did not understand about the loaves (6:52).
Only a few chapters later the author of Mark will bring in a second framing device using twinned “feeding” stories, underscoring an important connection to the storm narratives, stating again that they do not yet understand. Back in 2:21-28 Jesus is picking grain on the sabbath, leading him to call back to David when challenged to note how David entered the house of God, ate, broke bread and fed the people, an unlawful act in light of the Torah. What then does this mean for Jesus to pick grain on the sabbath? Here the clear indication is that the sabbath is reflective of the arrival of the new careation. Soon we will have this very picture being applied to breaking loaves and feeding the crowds in the wilderness- creation being tranformed.
Thus, if the feeding is positioned here within two storm narratives as the “point,” it seems a fair to suggest that the reason they fear the transformed man seems intimately tied to what Jesus is doing in the wilderness. To feed the crowds, when seen in light of the gathering of the grain on the sabbath for the sake of this feeding, belongs to the same act of transofrming the world Jesus is bringing the Spirit to. Indeed, what is even more interesting is what ultimately brings us to this second storm passage, which is the stunning statment that Jesus has no power in his hometown (6:5), indicating that the movement of the Spirit is to be found in the wilderness. It is for this reason that Jesus calls the twelve (evoking the story of Israel) and sends them out into the wilderness two by two (which reflects the concern for proper “witness” within the law), giving them the same authority we find them fearing in response to seeing the transformed man- authority over the enslaving powers. A point of transition that is then marked by the death of John the Baptist, a narrative move that brings us all the way back to the beginning of chapter 1 and the one who is “more powerful” coming to baptize in the Spirit. Now the disciples are the ones casting out demons.and bringing about transformation in others.
What’s even more striking? The fact that the crowds who have recognized Jesus to this point now recognize the disciples/apostles (6:30-37), which is where the disciples urge Jesus to send them away so that they might buy their own food. Jesus’ response? “You give them something to eat.” (6:37) In the second feeding the story it is not resistance to the feeding that marks the disciples repeated command to “feed” the people (8:1-3) but the question “how can one feed” these people in the wilderness.
Just as the disciples are now casting out demons as Jesus did, the feeding of the crowd is followed by Jesus sending the disciples to the other side on their own (reversing Jesus’ movement of going ahead of the disciples), Jesus insstead ascending the mountain in the manner of Moses. Lest we forget the ways in which Jesus is being framed within the story of Israel. This is when the storm comes. One feature of this narrative point is the fact that the storm comes early in the evening and Jesus doess not go out until early in the morning, This indicates a whole night of “straining at the oars against the adverse winds.” Another distinguishing factor of this second storm narrative- they weren’t in danger. They were struggling to get to the other side. This is where we get the language of Jesus walking on the sea (evoking this image of something only God can do), with the intention of Jesus passing them by. Rather than this being a phrase that suggests neglect, its a phrase that indicates the arrival of God’s presence. Just as God’s presence passes by Moses, it passes by the disciples. It is a revelatory picture which once again brings about a response of fear. Fear that exist because they failed to understand the loaves. The very thing Jesus was gaethering grain for back in chapter 1.
So here is the lingering question- if they had understood the loaves how and in what way would this have addressed their fear? I feel like the narrative wants us as readers to connect this to the fear they have over seeing the transformed man. This is the question I am now sitting with. After all, they have now been casting out the demons and seeing the transformation through the Spirit working in their own hands. Which leads me to wonder if this fear would not be connected to something more fundamental. Something indicative of the larger reality this Gospel is proclaiming regarding the inbreaking of the kingdom and the transformation that its liberation from the enslaving powers means.
It feels like the same thing we find in the story of Israel and the people grumbling in the wilderness, echoing the eventual exasperation of the disciples- how can we feed the people (manna) in the wilderness? That somehow this liberation from slavery that brings us into the wilderness is precisely the thing that breeds this fear.
How can this be that the liberative act is followed up by this movement into a space that feels antithetical to what we might expect by such a fulfillment. In this sense the transformed man breeds fear precisely because of what it means for where the disciples are being called to go. Its an interesting thought. We all occupy this space in the wilderness. We are all part of the crowd standing between the doorway of hope on one side and despair on the other. In what sense does that space feel safer than the demons on one side and the transformation on the other? Is it that entering the house means being sent into the wilderness? Is this the nature of the inbreaking of God’s kingdom in an already-not yet reality? This inevitable sense that transformation means being awakened to not just the demons out there but the demons inside our own home and the responsibility this places to follow Jesus into the wilderness. And yet, to do so is precisely where we find the transformation of our home as well.
It’s this stark reality that is most difficult though- in an already-not-yet inbreaking of the kingdom we are called the carry the tension, not do away with it. In this sense I wonder if the fear is the awareness that seeing the transformed man means having to face the demons themselves. This resistance to this participatory nature of the Gospel. The very thing that leads to having to row against the winds of resistance with all of our questions and uncertainties. The Gospel according ot Mark tells us that this is precisely when and where God passes us by. We might feel like we are left fending for ourselves, when the point is that God is still going ahead of us in the struggle, making the new creation reality known through this participation. God is at work making all things new, feeding the world in the wilderness. This is the art of learning to see Jesus rather than a ghost.
The Old Woman With the Knife (Min Kyu-dong, 2026)- a stylish South Korean indie action film with some nice character beats
Night Call (Michiel Blanchart, 2025)- a tense low budget thriller about a guy who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time from France and Belgium (co-production).
Song Sung Blue (Craig Brewer, 2025)- a true story and a genuine and somewhat suprising crowd pleaser with a genuine emotional punch from the American Director who gave us Footloose
We Bury The Dead (Zak Hilditch, 2026)- Australian mid budget zombie film with an interesting and unique premise and some thoughtful thematic undertones starring the always great Daisy Ridley
Is This Thing On? (Bradley Cooper, 2026)- not the follow up to A Star is Born and Maestro I was expecting, going instead for a far less flashy, low key character film about a struggling marriage, but I’m here for it.
Little Amelie (Mailys Vallade and Liane-cho Han, 2025)- an impressive animated debut with some strong spiritual themes from France
The Mother and the Bear (Johnny Ma, 2026)- a love letter to Winnipeg from a Canadian Director that similtaneously functions as an exploration of family relationships.
Resurrection (Bi Gan, 2025)- a Chinese film from the Director of the Long Day’s Journey Into Night, which this film functions as a kind of spiritual sequel to with its visual and deeply poetic and symbolic presence.
Primate (Johannes Roberts, 2026)- it’s exactly what it sells itself as, which is a tightly scripted and paced horror film about a Primate who goes around killing everyone, managing to be a solid middle of the road January entry
Dead Man’s Wire (Gus Van Sant, 2025)- starring Bill Skarsgard, this retro drama is soaked in its 70’s vibe in all the necessary ways, making up for a slightly muted script with its deliciously old school presence
No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook, 2026)- a masterclass in filmmaking from South Korea’s greatest auteur, blending humor and commentary and moral ambiguity with a beautifully scripted story about a family and the socio-economic realities that define the real world struggles they have to manage
The Testament of Ann Lee (Mona Fastvld, 2025)- the real life story is perfectly suited for the choice to frame this as a kind of musical, treating the subject matter with the stort of openness and respect and curiousity that allows it to be a genuine exploration of faith and struggle
Mercy (Timur Bekmambetov, 2026)- decent idea, questionable execution leaves this a bit of a middling effort that was worth seeing on the big screen for the ways it utilizes a small budget (it’s creative to that end), but I don’t think it has lasting power beyond that
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (Nia DaCosta, 2026)- a follow up to one of my favorite films of 2025 (28 Years Later), and while I think it has some issues on the story front it nevertheless functions as a solid follow up in tone and theme
Shelter (Ric Roman Waugh, 2026)- another January, another Statham film, and I would put this one in the upper tier of his filmmography, as its a no frills, no twists, straight forward thriller that uses that simplicity to make the most of the chemistry between its aging and the young star, whom happens to be the best part about the film
Send Help (Sam Raimi, 2026)- Raimi’s back to doing what he loves, which is having fun going off the rails with some unhinged performances (in this case featuring what I think is a career best performance from McAdams). It misses some opportunities to really land the commentary that’s there for the taking, trading that instead for a few more late game twists, but that’s a small quibble with a film that boasts some memorable moments (and shout out to making one for us Survivor fans out here)
My month started with two hold overs from 2025, the buzzy Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (format: physical book) and the massive tome, Mark Twain by Ron Chernow (format: audiobook). Both books are ones in which I read the majority last year, but finished in the early weeks of January. McConaghy’s patient mystery lived up to expectations, finding a way to use it’s multiple POV’s in service of a linear storyline, its poetic and symbolic presence overcoming a slight identity crisis. It’s a story that begs the question, where do we find hope amidst the wild dark shores of this world.
Chernow on the other hand has managed what I would suggest is the definitive work on Twain and a must read for anyone interested in his life. It is exhaustive, made up of a broad collection of stories which blend together to create a nuanced and intimate picture of a complex life and enigmatic figure. It’s great in audio format, as it functions very much as oral storytelling, immersing the reader in the rhythms of the narrative.
The first book I started in 2026 was Martin Scorsese’s Conversations on Faith (format: physical book), a short 100 pages that boasts an often powerful and substantive window into Scorsese’s relationship to both film and faith. A must read for any fan of the filmmaker.
The first in a series of books I am reading on the importance of story and narrative was Kaitlin B. Curtice’s Everything Is a Story: Reclaiming the Power of Stories to Heal and Shape Our Lives (format: Kobo digital) This one was a bit of a mixed bag. It relies heavily on a working allegory, and if that allegory doesn’t land (for me it didn’t fully land) it ends up undercutting some of the observations the author wants to make. But I did do a lot of highlighting, and there were bits and pieces that I did find profound, beginning with the simple act of seeing everything as a story, and even more importantly recognizing that we are all born into a story that is already unfolding. Equally so it is the world around us that begins telling our story long before we come into awareness of it. I also appreciated the insights Curtice brings to the subject from the vantage point of her indigenous roots and spirituality.
The first fiction novel I read was Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before We Forget Kindness (format: physical book) , the next and final book in the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. One of two books I read this month featuring time travel and coffee, which is of course is an outstanding fact. As the final book this one does a really nice job of summarizing the journey of all of the characters, which I appreciated. It follows the familiar patterns, and while there’s nothing ground breaking here it has the touching and lovely dynamic that I’ve come to expect.
Leslie Baynes Between Interpretation and Imagination: C.S. Lewis and the Bible continues the welcome and apparent renassaince of renewed interest in Lewis and Tolkien as of late. This one focuses specifically on his relationship to the scriptures, which gives it a unique spin. The highlight by far is the second half of the book which walks through each book from the Narnia series making the argument that it remains his best expositional work. I found it not only incredibly persuasive (you’ll never look at the stories the same way), but enlightening.
I was less taken with Hugo Mendez’s The Gospel of John: A New History (format: Kobo digital) which I found to be full of questionable assumptions regarding the nature of this Gospel, both in its readings and its theories. For Ehrman apologists, of whom he is a student of and shares his views with, I imagine they will go for this like gangbusters. But to me there is so much other scholarship out there doing far better work on the relationship between John’s hellenized elements and its distinct Jewish presence, something Mendez continually ignores.
Wolf, Moon Dog by Thomas Wharton (format: public library): loved the premise, thought it was less effective in its execution. The early moments are good, but once it starts to move through broad sections of history and time it starts to get more and more unfocused as a narrative.
Jesus Changes Everything: A New World Made Possibler by Stanely Hauerwas (format: Kobo digital) is a great introduction to the hard hitting theologian, bringing together short essays that exhibit his unfiltered approach in speaking to what he sees as the demanding but liberating call of the Gospel. Full of great bite size quotes and readily desires to unsettle comfortable positions.
The Wages of Cinema: A Christian Aesthatic of Film in Conversation with Dorothy L. Sayers (format: Kobo digital) by Crystal L. Downing is about Sayers, about the technical art of film, and its about a particular christian aesthatic. Which is to say- it’s about a lot. Do all of these things work as effectively entry points depending on your point of interest? Maybe. For me I am deeply interested in the art of film and its intersection (in dialogue) with the Christian faith. I had only cursary knowledge of Sayers. From that vantage point I enjoyed a lot of it, although I can see where it is probably trying to do too much at the same time.
Sandwhich by Catherine Newman (format: Kindle digital) was my “actively dislike” read of the month. I went in blind, and wish I hadn’t because everything from the structure to the subject matter was not for me. It takes a plotless approach and binds it to superficial characters. Wasn’t a fan.
Mark as Story: An Introduction to the Narrative of a Gospel by David M. Rhoads (format: Kobo digital) was my the first book I finished in tandem with my journey this year through the Gospel according to Mark. A good place to start given my equal interest in narrative. It’s not the strongest work overall, but for anyone interested in reading the Gospel through the lens of story its a helpful treatment of literary style and structure and form. It’s a reminder that the Gospel is a literary construction as much as it is also a Gospel.
The next book I read is one that I really enjoyed, which is the recently released Meet the Newmans by Jennifer Niven (format: Libra audiobook). I loved the nostalgia of its 50’s/60’s Hollywood setting, but what I didn’t expect was how timely the commentary would feel, depicting a film industry in the throes of uncertainty and upheaval. Here the commentary speaks broadly, but it also has an intimate element as well, revolving around a memorable cast of characters and a really effective story structure. The way it centers on two pivotal moments, both essentially defining the arc in its own way on either side of each moment in the story gave it layers and intrigue. I’ll be thinking about this one for a while.
The Time Hop Coffee Shop by Phaedra Patrick (format: physical book) was a blind buy, and is the second book featuring time travel (sort of) and coffee. It’s surface level, although the idea is good and elements were endearing. As a whole some of the plot devices didn’t work as well as they needed to fully get me to where I needed to be with the character transofrmations. It id inspire a write up though in conversation with Meet the Newmans, as there is some interesting overlap in themes reagarding nostalgia and the different worlds we occupy.
The Sequel by Jean Hanff Korelitz (format: Libby digital) is a sequel to the great blockbuster The Plot, which I read last year. It’s not quite as strong, with the construction of the plot devices feeling a bit too aware and at times forced, but it still works and it was still entertaining. It’s one I feel could grow in my appreciation over time. I just need to reconcile the slow build of the first half.
The final book I read in January was also my favorite, which is Emily of New Moon by L.M. Montgomery, the first of three books I am planning to read by and about the famed author this year. It was my introduction to Montgomery and I really fell in love with her language, her style, and found great affinity with the character of Emily. I love when a book helps me to feel understood, and in this case very much affirmed in some of my own strange quirks questions and tendencies and passions.
The Stories of my Life 